Friday, December 11, 2015

Bernie Sanders, due to him being a Democratic Socialist who is running for POTUS, has inspired the Libertarian blogger Willis Hart to author a number of commentaries. Most of them focusing on how much of a dumbass Sanders is for not being a Libertarian.

In this case Willis is outraged that Senator Sanders correctly links ISIS in Syria to AGW (man-caused climate change).

Willis Hart: On the Fact that Bernie Sanders Is Attempting to Blame ISIS on (Man-Made) Climate Change... This man is either a bald-faced liar or an ignoramus beyond belief. (12/8/2015 AT 3:57pm).

The existence of ISIS cannot be blamed on man-caused climate change (Anthropogenic global warming or AGW) and Senator Sanders has made no such argument. Willis lies about this. Or he's an ignoramus and his take on Senator Sanders' actual argument is based on 2nd hand criticisms (from Conservative/Libertarian sources that are lying).

Either way there is lying involved, because, as we know (and perhaps Willis would agree with this) it was events put into action by former preznit gwb that lead to an environment where the formation of a group like ISIS was inevitable (the power vacuum created by the Iraq war/removal of Saddam and the dissolution of the Iraqi military).

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on [10/12/2014] told CNN host Candy Crowley that it was easy to criticize President Barack Obama's fight against ISIS in Iraq, but he reminded her that it was President George Bush's "disastrous blunder" that allowed the extremists group to get a foothold in the first place.

This claim that "Bernie Sanders Is Attempting to Blame ISIS on Man-Made Climate Change" is just another of the Hartster's infamous strawmen. Bernie Sanders blames ISIS on george bush's Iraq invasion.

As for the ACTUAL statements Senator Sanders has made in regards to the link between climate change and terrorism (and YES, he has made such statements)...

Bernie Sanders appearing on the 11/15/2015 edition of Face the Nation: ...we are going to see an increase in drought and flood and extreme weather disturbances as a result of climate change, what that means is that peoples all over the world are going to be fighting over limited natural resources... what happens in, say, Syria... is that when you have drought, when people can't grow their crops, they're going to migrate into cities...

And when people migrate into cities and they don't have jobs, there's going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment, and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now... So where you have discontent, where you have instability, that's where problems arise, and certainly, without a doubt, climate change will lead to that. (Sanders doubles down: Climate change causes terrorism by Bradford Richardson. The Hill 11/15/2015).

ISIS can't be blamed on man made climate change. There is a link, however.

U.S. military officials refer to climate change as a "threat multiplier" that takes issues like terrorism that would pose a threat to national security and exacerbates the damage they can cause. A 2014 Department of Defense report identifies climate change as the root of government instability that leads to widespread migration [and] can create an avenue for extremist ideologies and conditions that foster terrorism"...

...a paper published in the academic journal PNAS earlier this year argues that climate change helped create instability and fighting in Syria. The Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS, arose in the country in large part due to that instability. (Why Climate Change and Terrorism Are Connected by Justin Worland. Time 11/15/2015).

Senator Sanders did not, by the way, "double down" and say "climate change causes terrorism". What Senator Sanders is saying is the SAME THING the Department of Defense and PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is "one of the world's most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals") reports say... that climate change will (and has) made terrorism worse.

But the fact that Sanders is 100 percent correct on this did not prevent him being ridiculed in the media. By climate change deniers on the Right (like Willis) as well as others such as PolitiFact... which says Sanders' statements on the link between terrorism and climate change is "mostly false". But (in this case) PolitiFact is as full of shit as Willis.

But even PolitiFact didn't lie about Sanders saying climate change is TO BLAME for ISIS. PolitiFact reports that Sanders said "climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism". Climate change contributes to the growth (not creation) of situations that lead to more people becoming radicalized.

One such situation (as Senator Sanders points out) is the Syrian drought which has lead to the the refugee crisis. Refugees that US Republican politicos are demonizing by suggesting some might be ISIS infiltrators. These are people who are fleeing the conflict (between the Assad government, the so-called moderate rebels and ISIS).

For the record, the Syrians that joined ISIS (due to the instability caused by the conflict and made worse by the drought) could find easier methods to infiltrate over a multi-year vetting process (which the refugees are going through) [1]... such as via a tourist visa [2].

The bottom line is that climate change does act as a "threat multiplier" as the Department of Defense (in agreement with Senator Sanders) acknowledges. Sanders tells tells the truth in regards to this matter and Willis Hart is the ignorant liar. Although the Hartster's perfidiousness in regards to the very real link between climate change and terrorism isn't "beyond belief" given his long history of AGW denialism and hate for democratic socialism (his preference being for economic policies that favor the oligarchs).

Footnotes[1] ...refugee applicants are subject to the highest level of security checks of any type of traveler to the U.S. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees initially chooses which refugees to refer to the U.S. after doing its own check. U.S. officials then conduct multiple in-person interviews and verify a refugee's story with intelligence agencies and by running background checks through several government databases, including DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center. (Can Terrorists Really Infiltrate the Syrian Refugee Program? by Russell Berman. The Atlantic 11/18/2015).[2] It's much easier for a would-be terrorist to fly to the U.S. on a tourist visa. ...it makes little sense for an aspiring terrorist to apply to enter the United States as a refugee. Passing through the process often takes at least 18 months, and sometimes much longer. ... Overall, refugees are unlikely to be resettled at all - the UN Refugee Agency says that only about 1 percent of the world's refugees end up being taken in permanently elsewhere. Stephen Legomsky, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and former chief counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said... "No competent terrorist would choose the U.S. refugee process as a preferred strategy for gaining entry into the US". (Here's Why You Should Stop Worrying About Terrorists Entering The U.S. As Refugees by Roque Planas. HuffPo 11/18/2015).